Improvoker

Last Show April 4th at 8PM, RESERVE NOW!

New York City is a tough place to carve out your little slice of life. It’s an urban jungle full of weirdos, small apartments, bad bars, awful roommates, failed relationships, unobtainable goals, bed bugs, exorbitant gym membership fees, and a series of unlivable neighborhoods that have been made hip with catchy acronyms. It’s enough to make a grown woman sick… enough to make two grown women sick… enough to make two grown woman and an audience under a supermarket sick.

Photographs by Jodi Skersis

MEGAN & BRIDIE: Friends Without Benefits is one of those rare shows that totally surpassed my expectations. From the awesome preview skits I had seen at a few UCB Harold nights, I had pictured Megan and Bridie to be far more self deprecating and creepily dependent story line, but in reality the show is a wonderful mix of scenes documenting the meeting of two totally opposite women in the big city — one desperate for an apartment, one desperate for companionship.

It’s a classic tale of platonic city living.

Bridie Harrington and Megan Neuringer do a terrific job at creating characters that are both totally believable and ridiculously funny. Bridie plays a oblivious, fitness obsessed gal, whose search for the next big exercise leads her towards workouts that I know I have seen advertised at my local Crunch. Megan plays a neurotic Jewish gal whose life is filled with a series of problematic relationships that always seem to leave her unfulfilled. The two are thrown together in a co-dependent friendship, stemming from the need of an apartment, which begins to tear itself apart by their conflicting personalities.

Megan & Bridie: Friends Without Benefits is a terrific show filled with all the detritus that life serves up, viewed with refreshing candor and humor, with characters you can’t help but love. It’s like sex in the city, without the sex and with ladies you don’t want to strangle. The last show plays Wednesday April 4th 8PM at Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre (37 W 26th & 8th Ave). Make your reservations now.

Directed by Jason Mantzoukas